EAST BRUNSWICK – The members of the Assembly Education and Labor committees received a walk-through at the East Brunswick Public Library Tuesday morning, receiving a first-hand look at the services it provides to job-seekers as well as how endangered some of those services are.
Librarians from East Brunswick, Parsippany and Paterson said that helping people find jobs has become their top task. In the past couple of years, the East Brunswick library has added several databases to its network of computers, such as Frost & Sullivan, helping job-seekers gain free access to often expensive market research reports.
The databases are made possible by the Broadband Technology Opportunity Grant.
Officials said the grants will expire by June 2013, so access to the databases could be cut off by then.
In illustrating their value to library users, the officials gave the example of a prospective inventor who sought research on the current rate of accidents caused by exercise bands. The inventor was working on a new type of exercise band that would cut down on, if not eliminate, the number of injuries.
Common job sites include NJGrowsBiz.org, NJWorks@yourlibrary, and JerseyClicks, among others.
Karen Perry, a librarian here, said the high-level market research reports range anywhere from $6,000 to $15,000. However, through the Frost & Sullivan database, people can view them for free. She said the “access value” amounts to be about $4.7 million.
“That is a wonderful bargain,” she said.
